My research interests

A colleague of mine recently asked me what my IT research interests are.It got me thinking; I am interested in lots of things, but only a few that I am prepared to put serious time and effort into. Here they are:

Personal Knowledge Management

Team communication, collaboration and co-ordination, especially ad-hoc inter-business scenarios, but also more formal team, project and programme collaboration

I'm retired from work as a business and IT strategist. now I'm travelling, hiking, cycling, swimming, reading, gardening, learning, writing this blog and generally enjoying good times with friends and family

4 Responses

Eighteen research topics is an impressive record by anybody’s standard. However, “research” in my terminology (and I am not asking anybody to align his with mine) implies focusing on one or more topics and going in depth. There is a difference between “research interests” and “interesting topics to research”. I understand the temptation not to let anything go unnoticed; so many ‘juicy’ topics!

Where our analysis differs on this is in that the areas of interest I have are all related. The type of research I do is focussed on how changes in one area affect the others. So if you define research as spotting trends, influences and disruptive changes to established solutions then these related 18 areas do not seem so “impressive” a list. Of course I rely on many other sources for detailed research into particular areas.

You are right though; if anyone offered me the opportunity to study any of these areas in detail, then they could also be classified as “interesting topics to research”. Every so often projects present themselves that provide that opportunity.

In second examination of the ‘list of 18’ I concur that the actual topic s are fewer; there are multiple aspects of each on the list.

Alas! Programmes that allow one the luxury of experimental application of novel ideas are few and far between. So far between that by the time my next one appears on the horizon I will be retired 🙁

Of the topics you listed, Information (Lifecycle) Management is the most intractable, IMHO. The challenge of ‘legacy’ data is mountainous. I blogged about data cleansing on Diktyoma yesterday. Contamination of information stores and sources is what makes Folklore different from History.

Pleased that I convinced you, I agree that ILM is one of the biggest challenges. In fact one of the biggest problems is to try and get most people to see beyond technical Data Life Cycle Management “solutions”, that do nothing but hide the problem for a year or so.